Mortal Danger

escaped the death camps.
    Ten years later, Hannelore found Katja after the war, and she named Kate in honor of her old friend.
    Kate clearly came from strong stock. She was a pretty child, who grew to be a lovely woman—tall and slim, with blue-green eyes and almost-black hair. She had a little sister, Connie, eighteen months younger than she was.
    Kate became a flight attendant for American Airlines back in a time when they were still called stewardesses and their physical attractiveness seemed to be the primary job requisite. It was a career many young women aspired to, with far more applicants than jobs in what was considered a glamorous profession.
    Flying satisfied Kate’s quest for new experiences andadventures not to be found in small-town Ohio. She traveled a lot, both for her job and for pleasure and public service.
    Sometimes, when she was on layovers for American, she stayed in luxury hotels like the Fairmont in Dallas, with coffee on a silver tray, a fresh rose, and even a phone in the bathroom. But she also went on volunteer mercy missions, during which she would throw a sleeping bag on the dirt floor of a simple hut or tent in some far-off underprivileged country. She went to Nepal several times, volunteering for the Dr. Tom Dooley Foundation. Many of her fellow flight attendants did the same thing. By Nepalese law, they were only allowed to stay in the country for three months at a time. They could leave and come back, but they weren’t allowed to “take jobs” that belonged to citizens.
    Kate learned to adapt to almost any situation and was invariably cheerful and content with her life. One of her goals since childhood had been to help people, and the Dooley Foundation gave her an opportunity to do that.
     
    By 1973, Kate had moved to San Diego, California, to fly out of the American Airlines base there. It was a good time to live in San Diego, although the population boom and the inevitable traffic snarls were beginning to emerge. It wasn’t surprising that so many people were moving to San Diego County. The weather was perfect, and there were flowers everywhere Kate looked: bougainvillea, jasmine, poinsettias that grew roof-high, and hibiscuses in many colors. Even the freeway shoulders were carpeted with purple ice plants and manzanita bushes. There was the magnificentSan Diego Zoo, as well as San Diego Bay, with the ocean just beyond.
    Kate lived in various apartments, moving often, from Mission Valley to La Mesa, back to Mission Valley and, for a short time, in University City. In the late eighties, she found a condo for rent on Solana Beach. It was located on a cliff and had a magnificent, 180-degree ocean view. The rent was reasonable because she shared it with a platonic male roommate. Their schedules were so different that it was almost like living alone. Solana Beach was perfect for her, as she was a dedicated swimmer who would enjoy the sport for the rest of her life. She was in the ocean swimming or boogie boarding most of the days she wasn’t flying.
    When Kate was in her twenties, she always had plenty of dates, but she wasn’t anxious to get married. As she moved into her thirties, she had a few long relationships, but there always came a time when they ended. Sometimes she was the one who wanted to move on; sometimes she realized that the men she dated were averse to any lasting commitment. But she wasn’t lonely—she loved her job, and she was still extremely attractive. She felt no pressure to get married or to plunge into a long-term affair.
    Kate Jewell had many interests, and one of them was nutrition and its effect on health, perhaps because she had contracted the cytomegalovirus while she was in Nepal, and the virus had never quite gone away. But she’d always believed that what people ate changed who they were. She was a strict vegetarian who studied and worked in nutrition in the early eighties as she maintained her flight status with American Airlines.
    In the fall of 1989, Kate was in her midthirties, a timewhen most people pause to evaluate their lives. Kate was no different. She had just ended another relationship and realized that if she ever did marry, it might be too late to have children. She wasn’t unhappy, but she wasn’t really happy, either. She found herself at a crossroads.
    Kate started changing her life by literally and figuratively cleaning out her closets, throwing out both clothes and memories that were out-of-date. Then she decided to take